Hacker News Reader

Comment by abduhl | Hacker News Reader

What is the substantive difference between "Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says" and "Lab Leak Most Likely Caused Pandemic, Energy Dept. Says"? The only difference I see is that one notes the pandemic ("Covid-19") while the other notes the agency ("Energy Dept.").

Or is your comment more broadly that both headlines are bad? If so, then I'd disagree. Both headlines give the most important part of the story: a US agency currently believes that the pandemic was caused by a lab leak.

View on HN

> Both headlines give the most important part of the story: a US agency currently believes that the pandemic was caused by a lab leak.

seems to me you're still leaving out a very important part of the news, which is that the confidence level is "low".

so right now the US government has multiple theories, none of which it is confident. it's just that of the reports that is not confident in, it might be the least not confident in the lab leak idea.

but the WSJ has decided to throw integrity aside and ignore that part in their headline.

The confidence level for the Covid-19 vaccine being sterilizing was low, but we still ran headlines saying as much. The confidence level for cloth masks being effective was low, but we still ran headlines saying as much. The confidence level for everything when it comes to Covid-19 is low.

The media gave up on integrity a long time ago, especially with respect to the pandemic. You're just noticing it now?

You know you're right. Remember when Saddam closed his labs to us? The ones that never had WMDs? What was the "confidence" threshold for invading iraq? I also bet its the same exact people now telling us about more "confidence" levels.

Confidence, high, low, whatever, it means nothing. No one trusts the govt. or media anymore and no one should.

As long as this logic also applied to the “confidence” in the original official narrative that the lab leak theory was a conspiracy theory. In the LA area, many in the science/tech communities were on board with the official story and joined in the fun - laughing at the “morons” still considering the possibility of the lab leak.

I suspect many of those are the same ones who are eager to sweep it under the rug, or now turn to conspiracy theory that THIS story is part of a psyop but not the original response from the science/health authorities.

I think the criticism is that saying something is ‘most likely’ implies a sense of it being pretty likely. When the reality is that they are very uncertain.

Both headlines are clickbait compared to the content of the article.

I'm not sure what the better headline would be. "Lab leak possible origin?" Well, yes, in that they haven't ruled it out. But that's not really the same thing as saying that something is "most likely" even if, as the subhead notes, they wouldn't bet the farm on it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com